You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Left Hand Voicing Shapes

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Don't let your left hand be boring - Peter and Adam show some voicings to help keep things interesting.* Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey Peter. Yo. It's Monday. Yep. It's time for some more classic. You'll hear it. You're ready? Let's do it.

I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music, advice, learning, inspiration. Coming at you. Would that be something you might be interested in? Indeed, it would be. Thank you very much.

You can ask and answered. Self-asked and self-answer. We are brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. Go to You'll Hear It.com. To check out all things with the podcast. Yes. Including leaving us a speak pipe.

And don't forget to leave us. a nice rating and review. Peter, today we've got a classic list of seven. Yes. Straight out of the you'll hear it playbook here. This is seven left-hand voicing shapes. Shall we get to it? Let's do it.

All right. So we're going to talk about seven really specific shapes, a couple of general ideas, two in there. So first we're going to talk about fourths. Then we're going to talk about the minor triadopio, Herbie especial. I like that one. Just name that.

We're going to talk about Shell Pretty. Then we're going to talk about the Just Change One inner voice. voicing. We're going to talk about Shell Double Pretty. We're going to talk about the standards fourth, but with the ninth also. And then we're going to end with the shoegays cluster. Yeah, that I'm because I know about 17 different

shoegays clusters, so I'm excited to see. It's all about the vibe to the shoeges cluster. So let's go straight away with number one, fourths. Now, this is like the perfect way to get started with voicings. Let's say you're playing an F blues. Okay. You know, something we know a lot about around here. And we start here with this basic

F7 voicing. flat, A, and D. Yes. Right. Now, that's fourths on an F dominant scale, right? If you start on that seven, seven, fourth, 13. It's all in fourth. Now, did you know, Peter, that you can move that around diatonically?

Yes. In fourths. Yes. And you get these great voicing. You can literally do this on any chord. Right. As long as you find a good starting point, even on something like C major, like you think, oh, I can't move this. You totally can.

Of course. It actually sounds really. really, really great. Yeah, and on your example with the force, just to be thinking about it changes the interval. This is, when we have diatonic shifts on the piano, your actual shape is changing slightly. Not the

intervalic shape, I would say, but the actual shape of the, like in other words, it's all force, but sometimes you have an augmented fourth and a perfect force. Sometimes you have two perfect force. The tritone, sometimes it's a perfect fourth, yeah, absolutely. So it does change, like, the way

that it vibes with each other, depending on how you're playing that. And I think with these fourth voicing, the main thing is, and this is for pianists and non-pianists that want to up your piano chops and be able to use some basic improv, you know, with these rootless voicings,

is think about two different ways to practice them, diatonically moving. And then also that standard fourth voicing chromatically. Absolutely. And learning, so there you shape, that's more like guitar shape, shifting up, you know,

up the fretboard kind of style. And I'm glad we started with the blues here, like with an F7 on a blues. because this is so handy. Another way to do that, so that's one way is like with an F7, starting that voice. But if you're playing something like impressions

or so what, and you were to do a D minor seven, you can literally start with D, G, and C and move those around. It's just the white keys. And then when you get to the B section there, you want to go to that E flat. Nice.

And it's the same concept. It's a real easy way to sound like you know what you're doing. Exactly, exactly. No, it's great. All right, next, number two for our left-hand voicing shapes of note is the minor triadopio Herbie, especially. Would that be something you might be interested in? Possibly.

What the hell are you talking about? Well, I just came up with this. I don't even know. I'm sure Herbie was the first play. I'll tell you what it is later. Okay, so we got E flat, G flat. Yeah. We've got B, natural, and we've got D.

And this is over an F7? Yeah, but it's not the only thing you can play it over. I just did that because you said F7. That works really well. It could also be over like a D, half diminished. This would be like if you were to play like an F whole half diminished scale, right? Exactly, exactly. That's why it works over several places because like D13 flat 9 or even like a B or a B or.

A B over D. A B over D, yeah, totally. And then these are great. A lot of people don't play them because they're tricky to shift around chromatically. They don't really fall in a way that a guitarist would be able to do them. But the reason I called this, I just, I'm sure there's a better name for this. The minor triadopio herbie especially. It's a mouthful. It's that.

Special. It's special. That's Spanish for special. It is. You know, like Mexican beers will be like dosiques. The Negro Especiale. And they just add, like, Especiale at the end. Okay, so you've got two minor triads.

That's why it's the minor triad, Dopio, with a perfect fourth in the middle. There's your perfect fourth. There's your minor triad. Great symmetry. And look at the outside. Major seven. That's good.

That's a solid voicing. Solid voice. All right, number three, again, just to spell that out, that's E flat, G, B, and D for like an F7 or a B7, or even an A flat. Class 7 would work really well. And I'll just say one thing about fingering.

I finger this in kind of a strange way, that particular one. And this is why it's tricky to go chromatically. But I like to play these chromatically. So I'm going, we can't see each other's hands. What do you think I'm doing? I think you're doing 5-4-2-1. Exactly. Yeah.

And that would be typical. Try 4-3-2-1. You're nuts. Yeah. But check this out. But now go up a half-step chromatically. Now you've got that 4-5. Does that feel good?

It's not going to feel good yet. But it will. Oh, you went five on the one. Five on the bottom. Right. Because if you go five there and then you go up, it's right for inaccuracies. That's why he sounds so good, everybody. Those are the details, man.

No, but it is, it's like if you find something that you like, try something that may feel uncomfortable. Every new fingerprint feels uncomfortable at first. It's true. You know. So you got to get, it might not be the right fingering for you. And I mean, we have different sized hands and all those kind of things. But at least give it a chance because some of these foundational five, four, five, four at the bottom with the pinky and forth moving up and down can be a real. real nice situation.

Number three is the shell pretty. This is the most basic structure you can get. It's a three-note voicing. Yes. And I love to introduce beginners to this, or people who don't play the piano, like horn players that want to learn piano. If you want a great rootless voicing,

Peter's already on. Is that it? So it should be a three-note voicing. Yeah. With the shell, the third and the seventh. Yeah. And then one pretty note. Right, but the root also.

No root. Oh, it's just a three-note. It's a rootless voicing. It's a three-notice. Oh, I thought these had to be four-note. Oh, no, no, no, no. That's okay. So for this, for instance, if you were to play like, yeah, like an F major.

So, yeah, you could do that. You could do. But these are left hand. Left hand only, yeah. So E, A, D, you could do. Again, that's a fourth. You could do A, D, G also would work. A, E, G would work.

If you were to do like an F minor seven, you would do like A-flat, E-flat, G. It's really just the third and the seventh. And then one extra note, it actually doesn't matter. as long it's in that scale that you're taking from. That's all that matters. It's really a great way to structure voicing so you get what's needed, which is that shell, the third and the seventh, and then something that's a little extra.

So if you did like, this is A flat, E flat G like for an F minor, and then you go to B flat 13, that's still, right? That's your shell, because you're pretty, because you have, now you have. So if you go A flat, E flat, G on the F, that's the third, seventh, and ninth of the F minor seven. And if you go A flat, D, then, and G on the top of the B flat. Now you have the seventh and third and 13.

It's just your third and seventh. They're flipping top to bottom. It's a really simple, basic voice leading. But getting a grasp on that in all chords and all keys is, I think, crucial for a lot of beginner pianists. And it's good, too, because, you know, sometimes people might think, well, why are you going to just play that? Why don't I play the C also the fifth? You know. But check it out.

It sounds better, especially when you're repeating it, like, with the melody note up there. to not have it in the voice. The C especially is the tricky one. But we're foreshadowing a little bit later. We're about to do a different version. We're storytellers. What can we say? Number four is the just change one inner voice.

Yes. Okay. So this one, I just made this one up today. Obviously. I knew we had some really good foundational ones, but I like to have some kind of strange ones too. So this is more like a voicing that just really like many lends itself to some interesting movement.

A lot of times folks want to do inner voice movement. and they don't know how to get started with that or they think it's some kind of magical thing. But if you take G minor, so the voicing in the left-time four notes, ninth third, fifth, seventh. Yeah. So A, B, flat, D, F.

I'll play a little bass note for you. Yeah. It's very Bill Evans-ish. So what is that? What's the first movement you're doing? All I'm doing is taking the D and the D right there in the middle of the D-flat. And then down to C.

But what it does, it gives you some other harmony. And you know, you can play different roots over it. This could be, you know, B flat made. But if you do it over G, then you've got like a either G half diminished or maybe even what I was doing more like a B flat minor. Yeah. Major 7 over G. That's right.

And then that resolves on to a G minor 11. I love this voice. Because you got a cluster plus the 7. That's nice. So it's just a little thing to give you. a little place to go. And you could throw these in somewhere if you're playing like... What do you know about that?

Yeah, that's it. That's exactly what I was talking about. Yeah. This is that Bill Evans Israel sound. So check this out. This is exactly what Peter's talking about here. Great. Great minds think alike.

Listen to the inner voice that's moving around on that D minor. So he's going like walking up instead of down, but it's the same concept. Exactly. So that's more of like my... Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's the same thing.

And then that in four. the harmony that you can play over it or can just be a fun thing to do on its own. That's awesome. Number five, we talked about the shell pretty. What about the shell double pretty? It's a similar situation. Is that different than the shell dopio pretty?

It's the same. Okay. So if we're back at our F minor 7 and B flat 7, right? And you were talking about, well, why not throw the C in there? Well, the C is tricky because it's like that fifth. But what if you, instead of the C, you threw in an even more pretty note? What? A flat, B flat, B flat, and G.

over that F minor 7. Now check it out. When we go to the B flat 7, again, do the shell, seventh and third, and how about two pretty notes? How about two really pretty notes? Flat 9. A little tension. Pretty tension.

So check it out. Now you have the E flat going down to the D flat, and you have the B flat going up to the B natural. Flat 9 situation. You have some contrary motion within your own voicing. Man, this is when the evening goes from good to great. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. So that's great. I love that you pointed out the contrary motion of those two inner voices because that really informs the success of voicing and changes and progressions as much as the specific solitary kind of verticalization of what the, you know, looking at, oh, is this a good voicing? That's why we're always looking at progressions. It's never about just one voicing, although we are doing an episode about just voicing. But we're putting them all in context. That's right. Now we're having fun talking about the shapes here.

That's right. It's all about the shapes. That's right. Okay, Peter. Number six. Okay, so this, I went back to basics on this. This is a simple one, but sometimes we kind of forget about these things. The standard fourths, which is what you call, you know, over that F7 when you start the beginning, seventh, third, 13th.

Right? Yeah. But we're just adding the ninth in. It changes it so much. Wait, do that again? So that's just without the ninth. Oh, but with the ninth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's great. And especially when you start moving around this shape chromatic. It's very different than... Well, it's very crunchy. It's very crunchy. So you have E-flat, G, A, and D here. Yeah. Let me play that again.

I'll put a base on it. And especially as you move, like... It's all the same shape. Glad it was getting a little fancy, but, you know? It's really great, man. Yeah. I love that shape. So again, it's E-flat, G, A, and D over an F-7.

You know what's great about these shapes? Puspifically, is what my son and Ivan would say. Specifically, look at the intervals that are in this shape. This is why this shape. That's why this shape works so well, right? The first interval from the bottom is a third. And then you have a major second. Yeah.

Right? And then you have a fourth. So you literally have a second, third, and fourth all within the same. Yeah. And I always look at these kinds of voicings as, like, this also works really good with the, with the dopeia herbia, herbie, especially, Al, going back and forth to that. But I look at these as like oftentimes two intervals separated by something. So major third, perfect fourth, separated by a whole step.

There's a big difference here in having these different intervals within a voicing, having thirds and seconds and fourth all mixed up as opposed to this. A stack of thirds, right? A stack of thirds to me sounds a little too, I mean, it has its place. I'm not saying it doesn't have its place. It certainly does. But for the kind of playing we're talking about here, if you want to get that crunchy sound, that airy slash crunchy sound, mix your intervals.

Make sure there's a second in there. Make sure there's a third in there. Make sure there's a fourth in there. That's right. Now, we can't see each other's hands. How are you fingering that? I'm going, there's no right or wrong. No, I'm going...

I'm going to go 5-3-2-1, or sorry, 4-3-2-1. Right? What are you doing? I'm doing... I'm doing... You know what I would do actually if I were actually playing this? I would do 5-4-3-1. Five-four, interesting.

Okay, so check this out. It might feel awkward at first. I'm going three on the bottom. What? And then two on the G and the A, and then one on the D. I'm just kidding. I'll just mess with you. I'm going elbow on the E flag.

We're going off the backboard, hitting the scores. I was like, oh my God, this guy has frog fingers. How is he doing it? Incredible. Yeah, no, five three. Actually, I say just five, four, three. I do five three, two. I also would do five three, two one or five, four, three, two.

I think it depends on where I would be coming from, honestly. Yeah, exactly. And it's also a matter of like, how much chromatic stuff you want to do. Yeah. Because that starts to, like, that would actually be a good reason for you using the 5-4 instead of 5-3 as if you're going up chromatically. Yeah.

Could be. Yeah. All right, number seven is the shoegaze cluster. Okay, tell me about this. All right. Well, the shoegaze cluster, man. It's really, it's a three-note voicing. He's already got it.

He's already got it. That was more smooth jazz. So I'm taking this. So just give me a little 251 in the key of F, Peter, bar each 251. Now just give me a nice little bass bass bass. line, something I can comp for, and I'm going to show you my cluster. Yeah, let me have the chords here. Let me have the chords. You just get the mix. I'm shoegazing, man. So here, it's just a, it's a simple cluster. I've got a second, A and B flat, and a third above that

D for my G minor. For the C7, you just take that D, and you drop it down to D flat. Still three notes. Still three notes. Now, for our F7, there's multiple options. You could go sharp 11, B, C, and E. You know, you can go B, C, and G. It's just a great voice. What about A, B, B, C? A, B, D. A, B, D, also great.

Totally great. You could go E, F, C. The point is you have a second on the bottom. Yeah. And then you have any kind of interval above that. Usually a third or a fourth maybe. Could be minor, could be major. Could be minor, could be major.

But just play around with putting this sound. Get your Herbie on Get your bed meldo on I'm about I'm about I never think about Herbie as a shoegger because that's not really his style

Oh Herbie's the OG Shoogazer man With these voicing Yeah That's all the man This is all Herbie Late 60s Herbie

Yeah Genius stuff Yeah cool Well thanks everybody So just to sum up here We have number one Fourth's Number two

The Minor Triad Dopeo Herbie especiale Number three Shell Pretty Yeah number four the just change one inner voice. Number five, the shell double pretty. Yeah.

Number six, the standard force, but with the nine also. And then the shoegaze cluster. Right, exactly. All right. Well, we did it, Adam. That's how we do it, man. I finally got it. I got the whoosh down.

Yeah. Well, you're not supposed to talk about it. No, but I understand. Now I understand. Okay, got it. Never shall we talk about it again. You know what? Right over my head.

Cool. We are brought to you by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio Jazz and check out Adam's brand new course. The Major Scale Course. Did you know it is not the major scales course? It's the major scale course. You're very dogmatic about that. Tell the people why.

Well, you know, we love to mess with titles here of our courses. And I was thinking like, what are great titles for like jazz instructional things? And I remember the best selling jazz instructional book of all time is literally called The Jazz Theory Book. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or the Jazz Piano Book is another one by Mark Levine. So I was like, what if we just did like the major scale course? Just say what you see.

And in the course, we practice the major scale in very specific ways, not just this. Although we do do that. We do thirds, triads. We do chords. We do pivots. We do all these different ways in every key. And I practice with you. Listen, we're talking about practice. We are, Alan. Not a game. Not a game. I know. A. I'm not a game. We're talking about practice. And I practice in every. key with you. I tell you how fast to go, even a little bit of like maybe how you should be thinking about this as we're going. Yes. And we hit every single key. It's great. And I would say if you haven't had a chance to check out our wonderful Open Studio Pro program, this would actually be a good entry point to that. You can kind of get used to Adam's teaching style and his concepts and then

see if you are eligible to go next level. Is that opening back up soon? Are we open it open? We are open with Open Studio Pro. It's open for a limited time. If you want to join Open Studio Pro, it's a commitment. It's commitment. Don't think you can just kind of jump in there. It takes a little bit of a mindset of I'm ready to grow for real. It's Peloton for Pianas. It's Pelotan. You know, I was scared about saying that, but you know what?

Sue me. No, it is. We work every day over there. I mean, we practice like an hour a day together. Do you have a leaderboard for your students there? I need a leaderboard for this. But it's not competitive like that. But also it's supportive.

And it's very supportive. It's a great community, man. And we do all kinds of different things like that. We have a transcriber club where we literally just pick different solos and learn them together to keep people motivated to transcribe and to listen. We have daily ear training sessions that I record, little five-minute ear training sessions that get released every day so you can keep your ears on point. We have how to transcribe with our rock star transcriber Mexicamese.

We've got rhythm with Bob DeBoo. It's a whole community. So you can check that out. Absolutely. So go to open studio jazz.com slash pro to learn more about that. Hey, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review. We are still going to read every single review. we get. That's right. So in your podcast app, if we remember.

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